After I save my game, I get something called Error 12 (or Error 16). It tells me to consult the Readme, but the Readme doesn’t list this error. What is it, and how do I avoid it?

I’ve been baby-jacked! What can I do?

If a Sim is holding a baby and you ask them to leave, they will more than likely leave with the baby, and it will be removed from your family. This is a bug, so just be sure to take your baby back before kicking them out of the house.

You can also do the resetSim cheat code. Hit CTRL + SHIFT + C, then type the following:

resetSim FirstName LastName

...So if I wanted to reset my namesake, I'd type "resetSim Pyro Falkon" without quotes. The Sim in question, regardless of age, will be teleported to his or her home lot with mood meters reset.

Two of my Sims got married. One Sim had a bunch of money, and moved into her new husband’s house… but now her money is gone! Is it just somewhere I’m not seeing?

It’s a bug probably—we can’t imagine this would actually be a design choice. But you’re right, when two Sims get married, their bank accounts do not wholly combine. There is currently no workaround for this short of avoiding marriage entirely.

My Sims have stopped / started aging when I had it enabled / disabled it! What happened?

The options menu doesn’t stick by save game, it sticks globally. If you have Save Game 1 for example, then make a new game and switch the option, then go back to Save Game 1, you’d have to re-toggle the option to make things tick again. This applies for all options, of course, not just aging. This is by design.

Why are my bills going up? I haven’t bought anything new.

There are a couple current snafus, probably bugs, that are in the game relating to bills. One that is being reported is that all objects on your lot work against your bills, so if a friend parks their car in your driveway, it works against your bills. This, naturally, seems to be a bug.

That’s a rare occurrence though. More commonly, it seems your bills are partly based on how much money you have in your bank account, so if you suddenly get a quick influx of money—say, from a promotion—your bills may jump a little more quickly than you realize. This may or may not be a bug, but it’s something to be aware of.

Either way, your bills won’t jump to the point where you can’t afford anything; you just may be shelling out a bit more to the Simulated Internal Revenue Service than you want to. Which I suppose does accurately mimic real-life, huh?

My Sim owned a business, but he doesn’t anymore. I didn’t sell it, so what happened to it?

If you switch your active family, most of your Sims’ inventory items will vanish. That can include deeds to businesses as well. Before switching families, be sure to empty all inventories into the house, even if you have to make a little one-off room.

I assigned my Sim a trait when he aged up, but it didn’t appear!

Yeah, this is a bug too. We haven’t personally experienced this aside from when children age up to teens, but it’s been reported that it strikes other age changes as well. We’ve never seen this happen when Sims are aged up through birthday cakes, so a possible workaround is to just ensure you always give your Sims birthday parties. If your teen or children are hit with the bug, you could wait until they hit the next age, and the traits may correct themselves.

If you’re struck with the bug, there are two ways to fix it. If you’re uncomfortable with cheating, then you can spend 20,000 Lifetime Happiness Points to get the Mid-Life Crisis superpower. You can only do this once you hit adulthood of course.

If you’re okay with cheating, the first thing you need to do is bring up the cheat console with CTRL + SHIFT + C. Then, type the cheat...

testingCheatsEnabled on

...(notice the space in there) to unlock some special commands. Now, hold SHIFT and left-click the Sim you want to alter. A pie menu will come up with two options: one to modify his or her traits, and one to force him or her to age up. After you alter things, you can do a “testingCheatsEnabled off” to disable the special commands if you so choose.

Why isn’t my Sim dying from old age, even though he’s older than the lifespan?

What a morbid question! The thing is, this is actually by design. The lifespan of a Sim, set in the options menu, is a minimum, rather than a hard number. By default, the lifespan of a Sim is 90 days; that means the Sim will live a minimum of 90 days (provided no disasters befall him of course). Some actions in the game, such as beating the Jogging Challenge of the Athletic skill set, can lengthen lifespan, so it’s not impossible to see a Sim live to around 120 days even if his lifespan is only 90.

After switching active families several times rapidly, the game doesn’t update the family member selection part of the interface, so I can’t select my active family members!

Simply go back to the main menu, and be sure to save. When you come back into the neighborhood, the game will have updated the interface correctly.

This is by design. The game works on a “momentum” system when it comes to social interactions. Even if two Sims are completely, totally in love, if they don’t live in the same house, then they can’t immediately jump in the sack when they visit each other. You have to command them to do a couple low-level romantic interactions, such as flirting or shy kisses, first. Then, a few more commands, such as Make Out and Leap Into Arms appear. Do those, and then you’ll see the high-level Woo Hoo and Try For Baby commands.

The thing is, the “momentum” can be broken if you do non-romantic actions. If you do four Make Out commands, then change it up and do a friendly-category Gossip command, the Make Out option usually disappears until you do some more low-level romantic interactions again. You need to simply keep doing romance constantly until you fulfill your (probably naughty) objective.

You can tell what stage you’re on by the description of the chat bubble in the top-left corner. For example, if two Sims are at the low-level commands, it will read “Sim feels Other Sim is being flirty.” As things advance, it will read “Sim feels Other Sim is very alluring.” At the top level, it will read “Sim feels Other Sim is extremely irresistible.” There are different phrases for other types of interactions, but they are consistent as far as their meaning goes.

I won second place at an opportunity, but I didn’t get any money for it, even though the game said I did.

No current workaround, but this is definitely a bug. You still get money for actually winning, so if your Sim is greatly skilled, go ahead and try the opportunity or weekly event anyway, and you might be rewarded.

While on vacation, my Sim get stuck in an interaction with an object. How do I get him to stop?

Sims seem to get stuck doing some animations in the Base Camps, especially late at night (after midnight). The only ones we’ve seen where they’ll be stuck for a long time are the bed when you give a “Go To Sleep” command, and the shower when you give a “Shower” command. In the former, they seem to hang out by the bed and stare at it until the next hour or two passes. In the later, they will do the action forever until manually stopped.

For example, Pete Falkon was given the “Go To Sleep” order at 12:20am. He stood by the bed until 2:00am when, exactly as the hour passed, he actually jumped into the sheets and fell asleep. The next day, I told him to take a shower, and he was just washing away for literally over 90 minutes after his Hygiene meter topped off. We have no idea why this is happening, and there seems to be no prediction when this one strikes. If the Sim is refusing to go to bed, your best bet is to just speed time up and hope he decides to get into bed presently. For the shower, things are much easier: just manually cancel the order by clicking the icon in the top-right corner, just like when you cancel any command.

I just wanted to build a basement, but I crashed when I clicked the tool! What do I do?

If you’re like me and played for two hours straight without saving when this happened, you’ll cry. (Go ahead, we won’t tell.) Be sure to save before clicking the Build Basement tool, just in case: sometimes you’ll immediately crash all the way to the desktop when you click it.

I just bought the “No Bills Forever” superpower but still got bills! What gives?

If you buy “No Bills Forever” on the same day bills are set to arrive (Tuesday or Thursday), chances are you might still get bills that one time. Think of it as that the superpower hasn’t kicked in yet. After this one final bill however, you’ll never see bills again in that family unless that Sim dies or moves out.

It appears that there is a bug connected to the mystical axe you get from China. If a Sim has the axe, then moves it into a chest, there’s no problem. However, once the axe is removed from the chest, weird things start to happen. In our experience, we were then unable to move anything anywhere. Buy Mode became sluggish and we were unable to change styles of objects, and we were unable to sell anything from our Sim’s inventory.

Once this bug strikes, there is little permanent damage. Save and quit as soon as you can, then simply restart the game. Once the game restarts, almost everything is back to normal. The axe itself, for us, disappeared entirely. However, our Sim that had the power of the axe still used it when commanded; the axe seems to be a state of being rather than an actual object as far as the game is concerned. So now, although the family doesn’t have the axe at all, our Sim still pulls it out of thin air when she needs to shatter some rocks.

Why isn’t my Sim isn’t using his computer, even though he was able to the last time I played?

When you install the expansion pack, Sims may have trouble pathfinding some specific objects. We had an adult Sim who couldn’t use his computer, and another toddler Sim unable to use one of his little toys for some reason. The solution here is to sell the offending object (the desk chair in the former case, the toy in the latter), then buy the same object and stick it in the same place.

We’ve also had similar problems with cribs. While toddlers can be placed in cribs, toddlers seem to not understand they’re actually in a crib if it was leftover from prior to the expansion being installed. That is, say the toddler is sleepy, and you put him in the crib. He may not realize he’s actually in it, and will continue to cry and scream (and keep everyone else awake) until he finally just passes out when his Energy meter empties. Again, the solution is to buy a new crib, even if you just use the eyedropper tool to clone the crib you’ve got. Once he’s in the new crib, he’ll realize it, and he’ll go to sleep if he’s tired enough.

Why does an opportunity say “Return home to complete the opportunity” when I’m already home?

This bug strikes when you’ve moved a family, especially when you move your active family, switch the active family, then switch back. It’s best if you just clear out opportunities by right-clicking them in the opportunity pane if you have moved your family.

Why is there a giant hole in my terrain?

Probably because you had a staircase linking your first floor and your basement, and you used the sledgehammer tool to destroy the stairs. If you wish to avoid this (and who doesn’t?), then make sure if you delete stairs, you do so by selecting the stair tool, holding CTRL, and clicking the stairs you wish to delete.

Why did my fish die while I was on vacation?

There is a bug where, although everything else is on a time freeze, going on a vacation does not auto-feed your fish. So, if you want your little guppy to still be swimming when you come back, be sure to take the fish out of your fishbowl and stuff him in the family inventory. When you come back, just take him out and put back in his bowl.